6 August 2008: The World Bank, the UN International Strategy
for Disaster Reduction (UN/ISDR) and the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction
and Recovery (GFDRR) have released an interactive report entitled ‘Climate
Resilient Cities,' which provides cities and their governments with guidelines
to reduce their vulnerability to climate change and strengthen disaster risk
management.
August 2008: An opinion brief authored by Madeleen Helmer,
Red Cross/Red Crescent Climate Centre, Sarah La Trobe, Tearfund, and Silvia
Llosa, UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction Secretariat, notes that
the humanitarian community has not engaged in climate debates, particularly
since attention focused on addressing the causes of climate change.
July 2008. The UN Office for the
Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has launched, in collaboration with
the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UN/ISDR) Secretariat, a
document for the implementation of Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA) Priority Five
(disaster preparedness for effective response at all levels).
7 May 2008: The UN International Strategy on Disaster Reduction (UN/ISDR) intervened during the discussion of “drought” at the sixteenth session of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development, which convened in New York, US, from 5-16 May 2008. The UN/ISDR delegation highlighted that regional and sub-regional networks that address drought risk reduction exist or are in the process of being formed, although their establishment has not been as successful as desired due to “overlapping political jurisdictions, differences in the types of participants and policy issues in each region, varying degrees of interest among potential regional participants, and different implementation timelines.”
15 May 2008: On the occasion of the second International Disaster Reduction Conference, to be held in Davos, Switzerland, from 25-29 August 2008, the UN/ISDR Secretariat will release the 2008 Virtual Disaster Reduction Library II.
Responding to the recent storms in China, Sálvano Briceño, Director of the Secretariat of the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UN/ISDR), said “the unprecedented scale, cost, and human impacts of China's freak month of snowstorms, its worst in 50 years, herald a need for the world to get ready for new kinds of disasters.”
Briceño said “the intensifying effect of climate change on weather, combined with global trends of rapid urbanization and environmental degradation, will lead to ever more complex disasters involving more and more people, and particularly affecting the poor.
18 January 2008: UN/ISDR's 2007 disaster figures reveal that 2007 witnessed a marked increase in the number of floods compared with the average of the last seven years, and Asia was the continent hit hardest by disasters.
The Secretariat of the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UN/ISDR) and the World Health Organization (WHO) launched the global campaign “Hospitals Safe from Disasters” at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
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